The International Women’s Media Foundation appears to be trying to rectify the mistake it made when it granted a “courage in journalism” award to a virulently antisemitic writer.
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The IWMF has rescinded an award it bestowed upon Maha Hussaini, a freelance writer based in the Gaza Strip. The move comes after the Washington Free Beacon exposed the writer for her support of the terrorist group Hamas, and condemnation of Israel’s effort to eliminate the organization after it launched a bloody surprise attack on the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023:
The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) said it decided to revoke the award after learning about “comments made by Maha Hussaini in past years that contradict the values of our organization.”
“Both the Courage Awards and the IWMF’s mission are based on integrity and opposition to intolerance. We do not, and will not, condone or support views or statements that do not adhere to those principles,” said the organization in a statement.
The news comes after the Free Beacon reported that Hussaini, an opinion writer for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, has approvingly posted anti-Semitic cartoons that were drawn by the first- and second-place winners of Iran’s 2006 International Holocaust Cartoon Contest.
She has also openly supported terrorism, writing “glory to the martyrs” after Palestinian terrorists launched a deadly attack at the Temple Mount in 2017, killing two Israeli officers. When the Israel Defense Forces demolished Hamas’s intelligence headquarters inside the al-Jalaa building in 2021, Hussaini wrote that Gazans would “build ten [towers] so that our resistance can bomb the occupation again.”
Hussaini stood by her comments in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, after her award was revoked, saying she has “no regrets about any posts or reasons that led to the rescinding of this award.”
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The writer claimed that the IWMF “succumbed to pressure and chose to act contrary to courage,” and stated that this development is the result of the “Zionist lobby” going after Palestinian journalists who defend Hamas.
In another post, Hussaini claimed that since its founding in 1948, “Israel has never stopped crimes of ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, mass killings or apartheid.” She has also defended the use of terrorism against the Jewish state, characterizing it as “resistance against colonialism”:
She posted another cartoon in 2018 that showed a prisoner waving a Palestinian flag from inside a Jewish star-shaped prison cell, while a voice bubble reads: “Resistance against colonialism is NOT a crime! It’s a duty!” The image also includes a reference to an international law code that some Palestinians claim justifies acts of terrorism against Israel.
That cartoon was drawn by Carlos Latuff, who won second place in Iran’s 2006 Holocaust drawing contest.
In a post alongside the cartoon, Hussaini defended Hamas.
“Whether we like it or not, Hamas consisutes [sic] a large part of the Palestinian society,” she wrote. “Condemning it doesn’t only mean opposing a political party but criminalizing people’s choice to resist oppression.”
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She has also openly supported terrorism on social media. In one instance, she praised a terrorist attack that killed two Israeli border officials in 2017.
Question: Were those who chose Hussaini for the award truly unaware of her antisemitic posts and support of terrorism or did they simply believe that nobody would dig them up? How could the IWMF have missed the fact that Hussaini is a brazen terrorist sympathizer?
Regardless of the answer to those questions, at least they have done the right thing after it was exposed.